| Copyright | ||
|
Home Foreign Policy, 1649-1688, and the Beginnings of Greater Britain, 1603-1688 1603-1688; Part 6 |
1603-1688; Part 6On the mainland of India the English East India ComÂpany met with greater success. It had to encounter the hostility of the Portuguese, but, despite that, it managed to prosper. In 1612 it established its first depot for goods, or " factory", as it was called, at Surat, on the west coast of India (Leave would not have been obtained from the native ruler for this factory to be established but for the fact that Captain Thomas Best had won a great reputation for the English in that same year by defeating, on four successive occasions, an overwhelming force of Portuguese ships). Others followed at Madras (1639), Bombay (1661), and Calcutta (1690). At the close of the seventeenth century a rival company to the East India Company was started in England; but the two companies amalgamated in 1709, and the united company quickly developed trade. So far the object of the English in India had been merely the extension of trade; how the East India Company in later years obtained an empire in India which stretched from Cape Comorin to the Himalayas must be explained in a later chapter.Meantime, whilst the English merchants were developing a substantial trade in the East, English colonists had built up many settlements in the West. The first successful attempt was made in Virginia. In May, 1607, some hundred emigrants landed in Chesapeake Bay and founded the settlement of Jamestown. But the colony had great difficulties at first, though, when the adventurous Captain John Smith (If his autobiography may be believed, John Smith had fought against the Spaniards in the Low Countries and the Turks in Hungary. He had been thrown overboard by the crew of a French ship in a storm because he was considered a Huguenot. Saved by another ship, he had again fought against the Turks, and defeated three Turkish champions in single combat. Subsequently he was taken prisoner and sold as a slave; but he killed his master, Turkish pasha, made his escape, and returned to England) was for a short time President in 1608, things progressed more favourÂably. The colony did not, however, really prosper until the arrival of Lord De la Warr in 1610. His short governorship was the turning-point in the early history of Virginia, and the colonists soon received large reinforcements in numbers from the mother country. Then, in 1620, came the foundation of the Puritan colonies farther north. Many Puritans had fled, during Elizabeth's reign, from England in consequence of persecution, and settled in Holland. One hundred of these men got leave from James to found an English colony in America. Returning to England, the "Pilgrim Fathers", as they came to be called, started from Plymouth on board the Mayflower, landed in Cape Cod Harbour, and founded the little settlement of New Plymouth. The misgovernment and intolerance of Charles led to their numbers being largely augmented before long; indeed, it is said that nearly twenty thousand colonists sailed from Old to New England, as the group of the more northern colonies was called, between the accession of Charles I and the meeting of the Long Parliament in 1640 (There is a story, though there is no reliable evidence to support it, that in 1636 Cromwell and John Hampden, despairing of their country, took their passage to America, but that the vessel was stopped by an order in Council). And so the northern colonies, of which Massachusetts became far the most important, were gradually formed. |
Chronology |
| copyright by www.uuo-ununoctium.info |